Contemporary online marketplaces are able to offer a wide variety of groups or types of items (including goods, services, information and/or media of any type or form) to customers who may be located in virtually any area of the globe, in any number of ways. Such items may be delivered to a fulfillment center or other facility operated by the online marketplace by one or more sellers, vendors, manufacturers or other sources. When a customer places an order for one or more of the items, the online marketplace may package the item for delivery to the customer, process any necessary transactions, and arrange for the items to be delivered to the customer.
Within a modern fulfillment center environment, items that have been ordered by customers are typically delivered to the customers, or to destinations specified by such customers, according to one or more general methods. For example, an ordered item may be retrieved from a designated storage location and transported to a workstation where the item is to be prepared for delivery. Upon an arrival of the ordered item at the workstation, the item may be recognized by one or more manual or automatic means, such as by scanning or reading an external marking, label or other identifier on an outer surface of the item, by recognizing a data transfer device associated with the item or the vehicle in which it is transported, or by determining a mass of the item.
Once an ordered item has been identified, a set of instructions for preparing the ordered item for delivery may be determined and provided to a worker, e.g., on paper, or on at least one monitor or other computer display, and such instructions may be of any kind or take any form. For example, the instructions may identify a container (e.g., a box, a bag, a tube, an envelope) into which the ordered item is to be placed, along with an amount and type of dunnage (e.g., paper, plastic, foam materials or “bubble wrap”), a means of transit by which the container is to be delivered (e.g., a common carrier, the United States Postal Service, or a customized or specialized means of transit), as well as a destination for the container. Additionally, the instructions may be intrinsic to the ordered item itself. For example, an instruction may direct a worker to affix a label or decal on heavy or large items, to include a gift card or order description (e.g., packing slip) in a container with the ordered item, or to take any other specific action based on one or more attributes of the ordered item.
The processes of selecting containers and dunnage may be substantial drivers of the costs or time required in order to deliver such items. For example, while containers such as boxes, bags, tubes or envelopes are typically manufactured in nominal sizes, an item having dimensions that deviate from dimensions of nominally sized containers may require packing within a container having a number of voids or unused spaces, which are typically filled with dunnage. Moreover, selecting proper amounts and types of dunnage may create dilemmas for workers who are packing items within containers, as selecting excessive amounts of dunnage or overly heavy dunnage increases the weight of a container and may lead to unnecessary increases in cost, while selecting insufficient amounts of dunnage or inadequate types of dunnage may increase a risk of damage to an item during delivery. Furthermore, even when an item arrives at a destination safely, a customer or other recipient must dispose of a container in which the item arrived, along with any associated dunnage upon its arrival.